Matthew Walther of The Week is one of the most unpredictable and intriguing columnists out there, and he begins his latest offering with a provocative but accurate point: People believe in conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate in part because of revelations of the claims of longtime sex trafficking surrounding multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
As mentioned in today’s Morning Jolt, the Epstein allegations come on the heels of the Harvey Weinstein sexual-harassment and abuse scandals, which comes after the sexual-abuse scandals in the U.S. gymnastics programs, which comes after the sexual-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, which comes after the United Nations peacekeeper sex-abuse scandals . . . Man, it’s been a horrible couple of years, huh?
But Walther wraps up with a quasi-defense of Alex Jones:
Among other things, the Epstein case forces us to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions about the real meaning of “fake” news. There is, or should be, more to being informed than fact-checking formalism. If you have spent the last few years earnestly consuming mainstream left-of-center media in this country you will be under the impression that the United States has fallen under the control of a spray-tanned Mussolini clone who is never more than five minutes away from making birth control illegal. If you watch Fox News and read conservative publications, you no doubt bemoan the fact that Ronald Reagan’s heir is being hamstrung by a bunch of avocado toast-eating feminist witches. Meanwhile, Alex Jones’s audience will tell you that America, like the rest of the world, is ruled by a depraved internationalist elite whose ultimate allegiance is not to countries or political parties or ideologies but to one another. These people believe in nothing. They will safeguard their wealth and privilege at any cost. They will never break rank. And they will commit unspeakable crimes with impunity, while anyone who dares to speculate openly is sued or hounded out of public life as a kook.
Which of these worldviews is closest to the truth?
To quote NFL Live and not Joe Biden, “Come on, man!” The argument that Alex Jones does a better job of informing his audience about the realities of the world requires us to overlook the vast majority of Jones’s offerings, in particular talk about “crisis actors” faking school shootings such as the ones at Sandy Hook, contending that the United States has “weather weapons” and that the Air Force created floods in Texas, that 9/11 was an inside job, that terrorist attacks such as the ones in Brussels and Orlando were “false-flag operations,” that FEMA is preparing massive numbers of coffins for impending martial law and mass deaths, that the Pentagon has used “gay bombs” on both its own troops and Iraqis, and of course, that chemicals in the water are turning frogs gay.
Alex Jones does not have any unique insight into the reality of power in American life; he’s just a paranoid who sees the bogeyman behind every corner and who sees all manner of depraved evil in every institution. As almost every prognosticator learns, if you make enough predictions, sooner or later one of them will turn out to be right.